🍲🍎Protected Prosperity Parsnip & Apple Soup

2 Onions (prosperity, stability, protection, healing) 2 cloves Garlic (protection, healing, warding) 3 cups Parsnips (health, love, prosperity, manifestation, protection) 2 cups Apples (love, health, protection, stability) 4 cups Vegetable Stock (balance, happiness, grounding, stability) ½ teaspoon Curry Powder (protection, warding, purification, balance) Black Lentils (prosperity, abundance, balance, protection) Green Onion (prosperity, healing, protection, growth)  Parsley (divination, spirit work, protection, strength) Chilli Flakes (love, warding, cleansing, protection) Carrot and Beet Vegetable Crisps (love, healing, longevity, dispels illusion)

(vegetarian.vegan)🥄🥄

Teriyaki Tofu with Broccoli, so yummyyy 

My favorite easy & simple whole-foods(-ish) vegan dinner ideas !

Summer rolls: Wrap sliced cucumber, bell pepper, carrot and tofu into a rice paper (softened with room temperature water) along with some mixed greens and sesame seeds. Serve with sauce (crunchy peanut butter with tiny bit of shiracha and water).

Filled tortillas: Wrap mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, chopped cucumber, tofu/beans/falafel/etc and salsa into a wholegrain tortilla or some cosmopolitan lettuce.

Speed ramen: Bring 1-2 litres of water into a boil, add in some miso paste, soy sauce, veggie stock and wholegrain noodles. After cooking them for a while, pour noodles and plenty of stock into a bowl, top with steamed/fried tofu and corn, arugula, dried onion and shredded dried nori.

Oven vegetables: Chop (pretty much any) vegetables into semi large pieces, add in 1 tbsp olive oil, season with salt, pepper and herb mixture and throw into oven (or into a grill!) Eat as a replacement for pasta/fries/etc or as a main thing with some rice-mix or quinoa. 

Pizza: Use whole-grain pizza base (if you can’t find them at the store, just google for a recipe. I always replace 1/3 of the wholegrain flour with oat flour in any recipe), lay some ready-made pasta sauce and plenty of vegetables on top and bake. Add arugula and some olive oil on top when done. No cheese needed!

Simple curry: Add chopped onion and chickpeas/tofu into a pan with a little olive oil. Add in some apple sauce, soy sauce, powdered ginger, salt, pepper, thyme and vegetable stock powder. Add some coconut milk and let cook for a while. Serve with rice.

Thai-style curry: Add chopped onion, some boiled and chopped potato, bamboo pieces and tofu into a pan with a little olive oil. Add 1-2 tbsp of ready-made red curry paste and some coconut milk, let cook for a while. Serve with rice.

Rice bowl: Top cooked rice with 50% fresh vegetables such as cucumber, bell pepper, cherry tomato and avocado, and 50% cooked vegetables such as oven baked sweet potato. Use tahini or thinned down peanut butter as a sauce.

One-pot tomato pasta: Add 500 ml water, 300 ml of crushed tomatoes, some olives, chopped champion mushrooms(optional) and some sundried tomatoes into a pan with salt, pepper, herb mix, garlic powder and veggie stock powder. Bring to a boil, and add about 70 grams of wholegrain pasta. Lower heat and let cook for a while. 

Avocado pasta: Cut an avocado into chunks. Mix 2 tbsp of lemon juice, some leaf parsley, salt, pepper and a little bit of chili with the avocado. Boil about 70 grams of wholegrain pasta and add to the avocado mix.

Salad: Mix some cucumber, tomato, mixed greens, tofu cubes (or edamame beans), nuts and fruit (such as persimmon, apple, grapes, strawberries or avocado) together and enjoy with lemon juice, salsa, hummus or vinegar as a dressing. 

Filled vegetables: Mash some firm tofu together with some vegan pesto. Add salt and pepper if needed. Fill champion mushrooms or bell peppers with the mixture and bake.

Tips and notes!

To make your rice have more nutritional value, use brown / red / wild rice instead of white, and mix in some lentils, quinoa, black-eyed-beans and sunflower seeds. Cook for a bit longer than usual.​ 

For oven baked potatoes / sweet potatoes, cut them into about 1 cm thick slices and bake at 225 °C for about a half an hour. 

Every ingredient mentioned should be found in any supermarket pretty much anywhere, except for miso, nori sheets and rice paper which might not be around in small stores. 

The most processed ingredients in this list are pasta sauce, tofu, miso, and salsa. Coconut milk often has all kinds of additives as well so keep that in mind if you care about that kind of stuff. However, it’s quite easy to find minimally processed versions of these in the store, just look for the ones with least ingredients.

I’m aware that these aren’t exactly the most new and innovative ideas that anyone has ever come up with, but they are simple and my personal faves. I eat something from this list like 9 days out of 10. We all (or maybe just me idek) have moments where it feels impossible to come up with any ideas for a meal so this list is just a little reminder for those moments :)

Sesame Garlic Noodles with Broccoli, Basil & Crispy Tempeh

How I’ve been doing

Hiya! I’ve been getting some new followers and I feel kinda bad since I haven’t updated my progress here in a while. The truth is, there’s not much progress to be shared unfortunately :(

I’ve kept myself on track with my exercise fairly good. I have visited the gym once a week at WORST, and 5 times at best. It has become much easier to get up and go, even if the exercising itself still feels like a chore. I haven’t really been sticking with my exercise plan of 2 days cardio / 3 days strength tho, I just do whatever feels like the least boring option at each time. Still, I’m going at least and doing my thang in that field pretty well.

However, my diet is a different deal. I just cant seem to get a grip on proper nutrition anymore. I do eat a healthy breakfast and lunch, but after that is when things start to go wrong. My night almost always ends up on an eating spree, or a binge if you will. I don’t know weather to call it a binge or no, since it’s not a specific moment of eating a huge load of food exactly.

More or less it goes something like this: when I come home and start to prepare dinner, I get the urge to eat something simultaneously. No matter if I had a snack or two snacks after lunch, no matter how not hungry I am, I always want to eat straight away when I get home from school, and cannot wait 20 minutes for my dinner to cook. So I get a snack WHILE COOKING DINNER. Possibly two. Or three. This is usually something easy like bread or whatever random stuff I have in my fridge. Then I have my huge-ass dinner which should definitely keep me full for at least 4 hours, right? Wrong. Immediately when I’m finished with dinner, I get a massive craving for more. Even if I’m absolutely stuffed, I still want to have something else. And again, I just will demolish absolutely anything I can find in my kitchen.

After that, I might be satisfied for half an hour to 2 hours, and then I crave more. I always come up with a stupid excuse like the good ol’ ”tomorrow is a new day, I’m hungry now” or will just completely dismiss any thought process and just go ”I haven’t eaten that much today, it’s okay to have this”, even though I KNOW I’ve had enough food for one day already. And after that snack the same thing happens again every hour or so.

Long story short: After I come home, my whole night consists of eating, pretty much non-stop and I can’t seem to stop myself.

At first I thought I was addicted to sugar, since that’s what I usually went for when I wanted a snack. If I didn’t have anything good ready-made, I’d literally make a dough out of sugar, margarine and flour and eat that raw. But then I figured that sugar wasn’t actually my go-to if there was something else available: leftovers, 2min noodles, protein bars.... any easily-prepared food. So very often my ”bingeing” is actually on healthy food, like today after dinner I first went to rye bread, then dates, then leftover pasta, then more rye bread, more dates, wholegrain sugarfree cereal with smoothie, more leftover pasta. And I had chocolate in my kitchen the whole time and didn’t go for that.

So I guess it’s good that I’m not eating copious amounts of all-unhealthy food, but still it doesn’t help me to figure out what’s causing this. I feel like I’m literally addicted to eating and that is a very depressing thought since I have no idea how one would cope with that. I obviously don’t have certain trigger foods to avoid, and I can’t exactly avoid eating altogether either.

This nightly eating marathon is something I’ve been struggling pretty much always. I remember coming home from elementary school and just spending my whole night at the kitchen, getting something to eat every 30 minutes. I don’t know why and how to stop for good! I’ve had good runs of not doing this for months, and at those times it was probably because of calorie-counting and keeping a strict food diary which I hope to avoid doing now.

So yeah, that’s why my weight-loss is stuck again. I’ve gained 1,3kg since 22.12.2017, and actually only 0,3kg of that is actual ”christmas weight” that I put on over the holidays. That’s weird and annoying as well, how did I put on only 0,3kg when I LITERALLY ate 8000 calories everyday for like three weeks but when I’m trying to be healthy and I’m at least exercising, I put on 1kg in a month??

I feel annoyed, sad, frustrated and disappointed in myself. I’m just so lost and don’t know how to approach this situation. I feel like the only way I can lose weight is to count calories, track everything in myfitnesspal, plan every meal, control everything. I hate that. I hate to be so dependant on a tool. I can’t track everything I eat for the rest of my life, so I want to learn to stop doing it now. But I have no idea how.

For right now I think I will start a super simple and allowing food diary: just putting on the names of the foods and times when I ate it. No calories, no macros, no nutrients, no every-ingredient-listings. If that does help, maybe I will do it for a while and hopefully learn to be mindful about my food so I can eventually stop that as well. Best idea I can come up with anyways.

If you made it this far, I must congratulate you, this is so long and rambly I think even I will never read this again :D Just needed to vent and think out loud. If you hate this type of posts, well, I think this is not going to be the last one so... Sorry. You can always skip if these bore you. I will still be posting food diarys (once a week is my goal), recipes and progress pictures (if I ever get any progress..), so stay tuned for that~

Struggling

Phew... Today was not a good day for me diet-wise. Breakfast was fine (avocado rye bread and soy yogurt with protein powder), lunch was pretty fine (potato casserole thingy with side salad and rye bread), dinner was fine (leftover carbonara). I also had two dates for a snack and everything was jolly good. But then something clicked and I went for a full-blown binge.

I had THREE protein bars, which I had intended to eat over a week long period, as a pre-workout snack. Why?? Who the hell eats three protein bars in one go?? They taste like shit anyways?? They totaled 510 kcals. Wonderful A++. But wait, I’m not finished :—) I also had 2 pieces of banana bread, 185kcal each, and a rye bread slice with plenty of margarine and even a thick slice of cheddar. I DON’T LIKE CHEDDAR WHAT THE FUCK IT WAS TERRIBLE?? And now my shomach hurts because of it cause my body doesn’t tolerate dairy. Why. Just why??

So yup, today’s total: 2900 kcals :))) of which the healthy, normal stuff was 1765.

I mean, I know that it’s not gonna destroy my progress. I know that I’m probably not gonna gain even a 0,1 kg from that binge. Probably not even 0,05kg. Maybe not at all even. And it was protein bars and healthy banana bread, not chips or candy or anything super bad for my body. The thing is, I have no idea what triggered this. This happens to me every now and then and I just can’t figure it out. My diet is not very restrictive, so I shouldn’t be craving for things because of that. I’m not having any anxiety or anything atm so I can’t imagine it being emotion-related either. Guess I’m just a food addict with no self-control whatsoever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well yeah, just gonna go to sleep now and try again tomorrow. That’s what I always do and you just gotta keep doing it, no matter how many times you fail. It’s just so annoying when you feel like you have zero control and progress slows down because of that.

Breakfast: overnight oats (1dl mango smoothie, 1dl rolled oats, 1 dl soy yogurt, vegan protein powder), blueberries, coconut flakes ~390kcal Lunch: lime meringue pie, whipped cream ~380kcal Dinner: vegan pasta carbonara ~550kcal Snack: slice of sugar & fat & wheat free banana bread ~185kcal Total: 1505 kcal Macros: Carbs 56% / Protein 19% / Fat 25% Ah, the good ol’ cake for lunch thing... I swear to good lime key pie is my weight loss nemesis. Also, 90% of the times when I eat something non-vegan it’s lime key pie. Fuck that godforsaken tart of hell. Why does it have to be the best tasting thing in the world. My legit goal in life is to develop a healthy vegan lime key pie.  BUT ANYWAY, other than that, today was good! Hit the gym and did 25 mins on the treadmill and 20 on the stepper. And my food choices were pretty on point after all if you ignore the pie for lunch thing.  I’m trying to up my protein intake a bit since tomorrow I’m finally starting strength training at the gym and the goal is to do that three times a week. Let’s see how that goes since usually my diet is like 80% carb and 19% fat lol. 

Breakfast: overnight oats (1 dl rolled oats, 1 dl soy yogurt, 1 dl mango smoothie), blueberries, coconut flakes ~360kcal Snack 1: a banana ~120kcal Lunch: rye burger with vegetable patty, sundried tomato, lettuce and mayo ~365kcal Snack 2: three dates ~75kcal Dinner: beetroot soup, walnuts, thyme ~300kcal Snack 3: mango smoothie with protein powder ~175kcal

Total: 1395 kcal Today’s log! Sorry that there’s no photo of the last snack (smoothie), I had that after I made the picture (it was hella ugly anyway ur not missing out). About to hit the gym after posting this so the smoothie will work as a pre-workout meal.  I think reading my food diary gets really boring after a while since I basically eat the same stuff every single day... What can I say, I’m on a ryeburger-date-streak and I’m loving it. At least it’s not pasta today like every day for the past 87 years. 100 kcals under my goal today so that’s nice. I don’t wanna go much lower than that though, it’s not healthy either. But a hundred short or a hundred extra is a pretty basic everyday fluctuation so that’s completely fine with me.  Okay, off to the gym now! 

Breakfast: two slices of rye bread, 1,5 avocado, vitamins ~495kcal Snack 1: two dates ~50kcal Lunch: rye burger with vegetable patty, lettuce, tomato and mayo ~340kcal Snack 2: two dates ~50kcal Dinner: wholegrain pasta with diy pesto (basil, spinach, pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice), vegan cooking cream and walnuts ~485kcal Snack 3: two dates ~50kcal Total: 1470kcal So yeaaaa today the date is right, yesterdays log is supposed to say 18 obviously... Anyway, today I kept obsessing over dates and had to snack on them three times. Not sorry.  Pretty happy with the food choices I made today, and I also managed to set a foot on the gym too! Go me. 

Breakfast: two slices of wholegrain vegetable bread, an avocado, three dates, vitamins ~425kcal Snack 1: two dates ~50kcal Snack 2: a banana ~110kcal Dinner: two rye burgers: rye bread, two seitan burger patties, 1/2 avocado, cherry tomatoes, 1 tbsp mayonaise, lettuce ~805kcal Snack 3: 50ml vegan avocado coconut ice cream ~85kcal Total: 1475kcal Aaand here’s todays (well actually yesterdays since I made this after 12am... so the date should actually be 18.1. oooops) diary entry! I woke up really late and that kinda effed up my eating schedule. I didn’t feel like eating much lunch since my breakfast was at lowkey 2 pm so I just grabbed a banana instead, don’t judge me. After all I kind of made up for it by having a fairly large dinner of two burgers. Because that’s how it works right? Oh well. Anyway I stayed under my 1500kcal goal so yay me!

Breakfast: three slices of wholegrain vegetable bread, hummus, seitan slices, mustard, cucumber, two dates, vitamins ~360kcal Lunch: sweet potato soup, walnuts, thyme (two portions) ~470kcal Snack 1: two dates ~50kcal Dinner: avocado pasta, walnuts, thyme ~545kcal Snack 2: latte with soy milk and date syrup, two dates ~155kcal Total: 1580kcal

Idek if there’s a point posting this since it’s from couple of days ago, but here it is anyway lol. I got pretty close to my 1500kcal goal again, just a little bit over. It’s whatever, it’s not that strict anyways. Absolutely obsessed with dates, walnuts and thyme as you can see. 

Breakfast: two slices of carrot bread, tomato hummus, seitan slices, mustard, cucumber 300kcal Lunch: key lime cake, whipped cream 380kcal Dinner: mushroom pasta (100g chanterelle mushrooms, 100g wholegrain pasta, 1dl vegan cooking cream, 3tbsp tomato puree, 0,5tsp olive oil, thyme) 590kcal Snack 1: 200g of strawberries 90kcal Snack 2: 60g of rye chips 225kcal

Total: 1585

When you literally have a piece of cake for lunch and go over your calorie goal (only slightly tho) but still consider the day healthily spent since at least it wasn’t a whole jar of ice cream and two bags of chips :’)